Contracts help the organization to govern different types of relationships that the organization has. These relationships comprise everything between the organization and the partners, employees, customers, and everyone with whom it does the business. Contracts are an official document between two parties comprising the terms and conditions that both the parties have been agreed on. Such terms and conditions comprise what is usually referred to as a consideration, offer, acceptance, and mutually determined to be bound.
Contract Management is the process by which these contracts are effectively managed. Historically, a great amount of time and effort was spent negotiating contracts. However, today’s dynamic business world demands an active approach to handle the complete lifecycle of a company’s contracts.
Contract Management Software provides great value. This software allows many processes to be proactively managed. Contracts are created with the help of pre-approved templates with an easy-to-use wizard practice. Negotiation processes proceed more gracefully with an automatic check in check out and redlining document management functionality. Tasks are assigned and created, reports created, and bottlenecks escalated. Obligations are managed, permissions are applied, and key terms identified– all through automation.
What is an Enterprise Contract Management Software?
An enterprise contract management system is an all-in-one solution that lets large businesses report, manage, collaborate and track contracts on a single platform.
It offers the following:
– A uniform format for organizations to enter and store contract information.
– Tools to create and edit contracts contextually.
– A secure, unified source for businesses to store contracts and other important attachments.
– A reminder system that offers alerts for expiring contracts, pending payments, and other important contract events.
So how does it differ from other contracting tools?
The key difference for an enterprise contract management system is its ability to automate, impact, and improve work in all stages of contract development. This means presenting functional tweaks customized within a larger organization; some are mentioned below.
Access gatekeeping
Unlike small businesses that usually have multiple teams in different locations, each team has a more streamlined and planned set of responsibilities with this contract management software.
It is vital to limit other unaffiliated teams to access the data for information security.
Control of documents is also dependent on the organization’s hierarchy. For example, when a sales associate is given the control to edit the contract value, only a manager can change the delivery time or exit clause information.
Therefore, enterprise contract management systems provide a centralized resource that can limit access on an individual, project-to-project, team basis.
Data centralization
A typical business generates thousands of contracts across teams. Each of these contracts is compulsory to be accounted for and stored in a central repository until they are required again.
Having contract addresses here and there across the organization makes it difficult to obtain documents when required, leading to possible money and information loss during a rearrangement process.
Enterprise contract management systems are known for upholding a secure, centralized repository of available, easy and fast to navigate.
Ability to customize
While designing your templates is a good idea, customizing the template for particular teams is also vital.
This is because businesses have different customer categories, teams, methods of functioning, and possibly different vendors. Therefore, having a standard sales contract is effective for two different customer profiles.
Enterprise contract management systems make template creation and contract editing faster and allow customization while reducing erratic edits.
When is enterprise contract management software required?
An enterprise contract management system is ideal for organizations dealing with comprehensive contract cycles that come into their own in challenging workplaces.
This means organizations with numerous teams managing the contracting process or dealing with multiple clients get affected by the contracts they provide or are usually in a complex or highly debatable industry.
If you really require enterprise contract management software, study your current systems to check if you have:
Complex Contract Processes
The diversity of practices related to contract handling and creation makes interdepartmental teams where information-sharing gets challenging.
An enterprise contract management system help overcome this problem by standardizing and centralizing all contract workflows on a single platform for better visibility and collaboration. Moreover, all the legal documents are stored at one location to improve accessibility.
Manual workflows
This contract management system helps organize and automate repetitive tasks, saving time to focus on other important activities. This way, it improves the quality of work and enhances the team’s efficiency and productivity levels.
Revenue leakages
With the bulk of contracts to manage and process, it gets impossible to successfully track important details, including obligations, contract value, expiry and renewal dates etc.
Enterprise contract management system has an in-built tool that alerts the teams about important information and events. Making it easy for businesses to check their contracts for negotiating better.
